Human sacrifice cult that knows no boundaries

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A PEDESTRIAN crossing Tower Bridge spotted it: something that resembled a small torso dressed in orange shorts, floating near the north bank of the Thames, as he walked to work on the morning of September 21, 2001. It was indeed a human torso measuring only about 18 inches by eight inches and identified by the coroner as that of a young boy, aged between five and eight years with dark skin colour. The child's body had been skillfully butchered, the legs, arms and head removed and may have been hung upside down and drained entirely of blood before it was dressed in a pair of orange shorts and placed in the river. There was nothing to identify the child and no reports of missing children in the UK or Europe matched his physical description.

Further examination showed that the boy had been well nourished and had not been sexually abused. The contents of the stomach revealed traces of a common cough medicine and something quite bizarre. Just before he was murdered, the child had been fed a potion containing quartz clay pellets, ground animal bone and tiny particles of rough gold. The label on the orange shorts showed they were sold exclusively by Woolworths in Germany.

In the absence of fingerprints and dental records, Scotland Yard had no means of identifying the child. DNA technology was useless because there was nothing with which to match it, no relatives to provide body samples as a starting point for scientists.

The Metropolitan Police and Coroner's Court deal with about 45 bodies taken from the Thames each year but had never encountered anything like this. A special investigation unit was set up under Commander Andy Baker and led by Detective William O'Reilly - the senior officer who visited Dublin this week accompanying gardai during the arrest of a west African man in Tallaght.

The unit began the traditional methodology of a murder investigation: identifying and eliminating possible leads; contacting foreign police forces for possible links; issuing press releases in an attempt to elicit public responses; and initiating forensic scientific research.

They approached Professor Ken Pye, a forensic geologist at Royal Holloway College whose genetic research techniques can tell, from trace elements in a human body, the geographical area where that person lived. In the case of the juvenile torso, Professor Pye found that it came from a small area in north-west Africa, probably a rural area near the city of Benin in south-western Nigeria. The forensic examination by Professor Pye also showed that the child had spent only a brief time in western Europe, probably only weeks before his murder.

The Met officers now had to establish the identity of the child and a motive for his murder. Firstly they gave the dead child a name, Adam. They had to discover why someone had brought Adam to London from Africa and then murdered him in such a careful and horrific manner.

Quickly, the theory that Adam was the victim of what is termed a ritualistic murder began to feature prominently in the Met's thinking. The detective unit's appeal for assistance from the European police liaison agency, Europol, in the Hague quickly produced general supporting evidence for this theory. Three weeks before the body in the Thames was discovered, the naked torso of a white girl, aged between five and seven, was found floating near the Dutch lake resort of Nulde. The girl had been butchered in exactly the same way. The Dutch police were also looking at the possibility of a ritualistic killing and had contacted detectives in Hamburg, Germany, where a similar case had been reported.

While the police in London began attempting to trace west Africans who had come into Britain from Germany, they also decided to visit South Africa where the Natal police have an occult crimes unit which specialises in investigating human sacrifice by 'Muti' witch doctors.

They visited the remote Zulu settlement of Eshowe in KwaZulu, Natal, where locals had been living in fear after the dismembered bodies of six villagers were found. One of the victims was a nine-year-old boy whose eyes, tongue and testicles had been removed. What appeared to be the limbs of five other children had been scattered in the scrubland. The locals knew it was the work of Muti witch doctors.

The Metropolitan Police enlisted the help of the South African academic Dr Hendrik Scholtz, an expert on witch doctors, Muti black magic and ritualistic murder. Commenting on the Adam murder he said: "The nature of the discovery of the body, features of the external examination including the nature of the wounds, clothing and mechanism of death are consistent with those of a ritual homicide as practised in Africa."

The motive for the murder was that the human parts were to be used as sacrifices to Muti deities in return for these gods bestowing greater powers on those in possession of the sacrificed body parts: the eyes to give the power of seeing into the future; the arms for greater strength; the legs for greater mobility; the penis, a particular prize, to give greater virility and fertility. The point of the sacrifice, Dr Scholtz said was to "awaken the supernatural force required to attain that goal".

After meeting with Dr Scholtz, Commander Baker confirmed: "We are looking at the possibility of a ritual murder. Muti is a taboo subject in the sub-Sahara, let alone in London, but there is some suggestion of ceremonies taking place in the UK and strong rumours that body parts are used. They could be brought in or taken from murdered bodies. Our fear is, it is the first of many."

In 2001, the South African government became sufficiently concerned at the growth in such murders to set up a Commission of Inquiry into Witchcraft Violence and Ritual Murders to investigate 140 killings that year alone in remote areas of the northern province. During their visit to South Africa, the Metropolitan Police officers successfully appealed to Nelson Mandela to broadcast a statement throughout Africa appealing for information about Adam and calling for an end to human sacrifice.

The first break in the Adam case came when Scottish police investigated a Nigerian asylum seeker who was reported to them after a claim that she had told a neighbour she was going to sacrifice her two young daughters. In January last year, Strathclyde Police found a variety of artifacts including feathers and stones in her house and two pairs of orange shorts identical to those put on Adam's remains. She had been living in Germany before coming to England in 2001.

She was detained and DNA tested but there was no connection between her DNA results and Adam. With no evidence to connect her with Adam, Joyce Asaguede was deported back to Nigeria with her two daughters but, the Metropolitan Police say, she is still under activeinvestigation.

It was through investigation of Asaguede that led the Metropolitan detectives to Dublin to question her former husband, believed to be named Akpojo Tor Koulibaly, also known as Sam Onojhighovie and Sam Kualibaly, who was arrested at his home in Tallaght on Thursday.

Koulibaly, 37, was already sought by German police after absconding while facing human trafficking and fraud charges for which he was sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 2001. German police have sought his extradition to serve the sentence imposed.

It is understood Koulibaly moved to England from Germany during early 2001 and from there moved to Cork and, more recently, Dublin. A computer found at his home was seized for analysis at the request of the Metropolitan Police. However, there is no evidence connecting Koulibaly with the murder.

This is the first investigation ever, involving gardai, into apparent human sacrifice, a practice that disappeared in western Europe in prehistoric times. Last May, however, a conference of senior police held by Europol heard that with greater globalization and movement of people from areas where human sacrifice is practised, it was only a matter of time before such crimes began to occur in Europe.

About 10 such suspected cases are now under investigation by EU police forces. With almost no means of tracing the movement of unknown children brought into the EU on false passports, it is feared that many more such murders may have taken place and that more will happen.